Tracks are getting too big! Kilobytes AND Size

[Flexman]

Racing last time I noticed that tracks are getting to big. It is horrible that you have to load about a Megabyte for some tracks. I think there should be a maximum of 200KB, otherwise players per modem will be excluded or are not able to start because their download still runs while the race starts.

And the other thing is that the size of the tracks is getting to big now. Earlier times (especially in Turbusliders 0.86) there used to be many tracks (maybe 50%) which fit on one screen. Now there are hardly any tracks like that. So if you have more players on one computer you can forget about entering into a server because you'll have pixel sized cars. Also if your hardware equipment is not up to date you cannot race because of a jerking picture.

Another issue is that often races get boring like the Formula 1 because you don't have to overtake cars very often after the first lap as there are so few players now and tracks are soo big. Also there are too many speeder races now.

Sure, one could setup his own server with smaller tracks but as there are few enough players I think that will be contraproductive. Maybe server admints should think about the size of their tracks - concerning kilobytes as well as their resolution. I think this is going into the wrong direction, races were funnier when they were smaller.

[Jazzyclub]

so, someone open a server named like: Playtrix.net - 56k modem rox

PS: i have seen players on this game and the 0.1% have slow connection, for this reason i dont think is a good idea open a dedicated server for 56k or say to the makers make your tracks mush small!

[Jazzyclub]

oh, another things.

Someone continuos say TS 0.86 TS 0.86, if you dont like the new feat of the new version so, play on TS 0.86

PS: i want remember you this is TS 1.06!!

[Mouse]

I agree with Jazzy. Sure some tracks are quite big, but i would rather wait a few miutes for them to download so i can enjoy a beautiful track as i race, rather than some PTX tracks, that seem to me were thrown together in 10 minutes. But a 56K server i suppose is nice for some, i dont have a problem with that.

[Guest]

PS: i have seen players on this game and the 0.1% have slow connection, for this reason i dont think is a good idea open a dedicated server for 56k or say to the makers make your tracks mush small!

Maybe you saw enough players who don't get a track preview because the track takes too long to load. I have a fast connection but many tracks have no preview as they take too long to load.

[Flexman]

And by the way it is not necersary to make tracks that big. I made a standard ice map once, if everyone used that instead of his own ice map then so many PNG files wouldn't be needed. But if everyone uses the same PNG files and uses another name for the same file than it need's to be loaded for each track instead of just one time.

This has nothing to do with 56k or not, it just could easily be changed... Just because the size is big it doesn't mean that a track is beautiful.

PS: i want remember you this is TS 1.06!!

You didn't play 0.86 did you? One still can use good things of the previous version in the next one, or do you want to be 1.07 a completely different version?

[Jazzyclub]

PS: i have seen players on this game and the 0.1% have slow connection, for this reason i dont think is a good idea open a dedicated server for 56k or say to the makers make your tracks mush small!

Maybe you saw enough players who don't get a track preview because the track takes too long to load. I have a fast connection but many tracks have no preview as they take too long to load.

only 1 thing, the track preview are not visible because who are maked the track not give to the admin the pat image file, so the game when try to find it give a little error and need to rebuilt it and take long time.

[Jazzyclub]

You didn't play 0.86 did you? One still can use good things of the previous version in the next one, or do you want to be 1.07 a completely different version?

i have played 0.86 beta for few mouth and with the comin of the 1.0 with new feat for me never can't to compare with the old version because the new have new feat, like someone "me for first" ask to ande for the pitstop system, to make it need a reconfiguration of the track file system and give an incompatible error with the old track version but i prefer a new feat like pitstop and rebuilt old track for the new version instead of have TS iced.

[Flexman]

only 1 thing, the track preview are not visible because who are maked the track not give to the admin the pat image file, so the game when try to find it give a little error and need to rebuilt it and take long time.

Next time in English please.

I was pretty sure I saw the preview during the next cup, so it didn't show up because it didn't finish loading. Fortunately loading was finished when the race started.

But as I said if you just use one pattern file for all your tracks instead the same pattern file with a different name for each track that will do...

[Jazzyclub]

if you have looked good the image files you can reach are not the same, i like to put all my custom tile in 1 image not like someone have 12 20 25 files to download for each track.

Try to delete some image of the original track and play on it, you can see the game give you an error and take more time to REBUILT THE PATTERN IMAGE

[Flexman]

if you have looked good the image files you can reach are not the same, i like to put all my custom tile in 1 image

I didn't blame you, I don't know who made all these big tracks. I just noticed that TS is downloading a big anmount of data regularly and I really don't see so many different tiles.

So I wanted to say that people should watch the size of their tracks. It's no use if it takes a minute on a fast connection and it's not so great if TS with 100 Tracks needs 50 MB. Tiles you use regularly you can put into 1 file and use just this one on all your tracks so that it only needs to be downloaded for one track and automatically exists in the next track that needs this tile.

Also I saw a track where one pattern file needed 218kb. Reducing this PNG to 256 colors instead of 16 millions made it look exactly the same but only 72kb.

Also the snow and ice tiles can be used from the standard Turbosliders data directory, all you need is to add an additional pattern file which accesses these tiles. There is no need of adding more image files to your tracks for snow and ice unless you want to give it a different look.

So whoever makes a track with additional tiles should check if the tales look the same when the PNG has 256 colors instead of 16 millions. That sometimes can reduce the file size to 33%.

[Jazzyclub]

Also I saw a track where one pattern file needed 218kb. Reducing this PNG to 256 colors instead of 16 millions made it look exactly the same but only 72kb.

This is true, i think can ask a new feat in the editor can give the possibility to choice the quality or something else to reduce the pattern image.

[Punatiainen]

You can use gif-or jpg-images as well. They will reduce imagesize and still their quality will remain good enough for little game like this.

You can also use existing pattern-files in datadirectory. And you dont need any .til-file. You can define tiles in trk-file.

And there you go, 100>kb less size in files.

[Flexman]

You can use gif-or jpg-images as well. They will reduce imagesize and still their quality will remain good enough for little game like this.

Yes JPG works as well. Depending how you made your tiles but usually PNG or GIF should work well. PNG has a slightly better compression but it also supports 16 Million colors, so if you save it as 16 Million color PNG it will be of course much bigger than a 256 color GIF. If you reduce the PNG to 256 colors it would be a little bit smaller I think, but there is not a big difference. Important is that you should watch the compression when using JPG and that you should reduce the colors when using PNG. And GIF won't support more than 256 anyway.

You can also use existing pattern-files in datadirectory. And you dont need any .til-file. You can define tiles in trk-file.

And there you go, 100>kb less size in files.

Exactly that's it! Tracks makers should take a look on that too because tracks really musn't have more than 200 kb.

[Hengari]

You can use gif-or jpg-images as well.

Gif-images don't work on all platforms. The Gif-library used on Windows and on different Linux distributions are different. It may work or it may not. I remember that pu_Vahus used a gif-image for one tile and the track never worked for me.

[Hengari]

Exactly that's it! Tracks makers should take a look on that too because tracks really musn't have more than 200 kb.

I agree that tracks should be smaller, especially those Jazzyclub and Dby's some tracks. Some optimization for images and some tricks would be good.

This is true, i think can ask a new feat in the editor can give the possibility to choice the quality or something else to reduce the pattern image.

The pattern file doesn't use millions of colors, it's already small compared to some tile-files. The tile graphics should be optimized to use smaller amount of colors, not the track pattern file.

And I hate the way you use the same mytile for all of your tracks.

[dby]

Good ideas. I've been a bit lazy. I've got some tiles that I'm going to optimize, but if there is semi-transparent colours in the tile I need to go with png-24.

Except for the rally tracks my biggest one is 256kB.

After optimizing some tiles it's 203kB. Now, 29,9kB of that are tiles that I have designed. Hengari's ts_cars-org_hg tile is 35,5kB. The editor-generated track pattern is 37,9kB. And, because of all the detail I've added, the .trk file is a whopping 100kB. If I get around to designing a better spectators-tile I could probably reduce that a bit too.

I'm sorry but I will probably add more tiles to my tracks in the future, to make them look as good a possible. And I enjoy to drive the medium sized track the most, around 20s laptime. It's too bad the community is still so small, otherwise small-track and modem servers would be a good idea.

[Jazzyclub]

i use mytiles because it give me the possibility to rotate some unrotable tiles, only this.

[Hengari]

i use mytiles because it give me the possibility to rotate some unrotable tiles, only this.

You don't need to use mytiles (yourtiles) to rotate all the tiles. Just start the editor with special parameter "-ar 1"

[dby]

i use mytiles because it give me the possibility to rotate some unrotable tiles, only this.

You don't need to use mytiles (yourtiles) to rotate all the tiles. Just start the editor with special parameter "-ar 1"

Thanks, I didn't know that either. Makes things a whole lot easier.

...but I can only get the level-tiles to rotate in 90 degree steps.

[Tijny]

i use mytiles because it give me the possibility to rotate some unrotable tiles, only this.

But after you finish a track you can (and should) manually change the tileset back to tiles2.til. Usually the TileDefinitions are in the .trk-file already, so another .til-file is in fact useless. Like this, you could save about 25kB to be downloaded, and perhaps also get rid of the trouble loading your tracks some people have been experiencing.

[Jazzyclub]

But after you finish a track you can (and should) manually change the tileset back to tiles2.til.

This is wrong, if you change mytiles with tiles2 the tiles i have rotated lost the rotation.

Usually the TileDefinitions are in the .trk-file already, so another .til-file is in fact useless.

I never put custom tiles in MYTILES, i repeat mytiles work only to rotate the original tiles.

Like this, you could save about 25kB to be downloaded, and perpahps also get rid of the trouble loading your tracks some people have been experiencing.

it is not my fault if the persons have problems to load my tracks, because understood that: or do not download in time all of the necessary file, or like for example KZ-Speedvalley hengari have uploaded the bugged version on PTX, i say to him few time the bug are fixed (no shortcut and no bug)

[Tijny]

This is wrong, if you change mytiles with tiles2 the tiles i have rotated lost the rotation.

I tried it for some of your tracks (also with rotated bridges) and it worked perfectly fine on most of them. Only on Jerez there was a checksum error because of the different .ter-file you used there.

I never put custom tiles in MYTILES, i repeat mytiles work only to rotate the original tiles.

That's what I'm saying, the custom tiles aren't in mytiles so you could as well use tiles2.til.

[Hengari]

it is not my fault if the persons have problems to load my tracks, because understood that: or do not download in time all of the necessary file, or like for example KZ-Speedvalley hengari have uploaded the bugged version on PTX, i say to him few time the bug are fixed (no shortcut and no bug)

Don't blame the innocent. The KZ-Speedvalley was never on my list. It was before the PTX divided the tracks to racing and fun -servers.

[Guest]

I never put custom tiles in MYTILES, i repeat mytiles work only to rotate the original tiles.

An exactly this is very stupid and not even necesary...

it is not my fault if the persons have problems to load my tracks

It is... instead just making a small change in the TIL file which would need some few KBs you created a new Tileset which only contains the same tiles that already exist. Very useless...